shirt. One day, you realize you have become the man your wife envisioned.
The shoes revealed something new, something unexpected in you."
But is not to take off one's shoes to reveal something not so lovely, some
thing, in fact, rather ugly-that is to say, one's feet? The writer offers her
own as an example.
Olga Berluti does not flinch. She reaches to cradle the feet. "No, no," she
says passionately. "There are no ugly feet. Feet are spiritual. They enable
man to stand up. They free his hands. Now, he can look at the stars."
Moccasin *Sioux, beaded sole, 1880 to 1900
j' hoes proclaim what it is you don't have to do," Elizabeth Semmel
hack says. "That's why Manolo Blahniks are called limousine shoes."
Next, Semmelhack shows off a pair of 19th-century Sioux moc
casins. Exquisite beadwork covers the soles. The limousine principle applies
here, too, except that the wealth proclaimed was horse wealth. The beaded
soles telegraphed a Sioux variation on a theme of upmanship: I don't have
to walk. I can ride. Furthermore,you who aren'ton a horse can see from the
soles of my moccasinsjust how well off I am.
Fast-forward to Diana Vreeland, the Vogue editor, who kept the soles of
her shoes polished to a perfect sheen, the implication being that her shoes
were not for anything as pedestrian as walking. It was fashionspeak for
I don't have to pound the pavement. Driver,come here.
In an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Nancy Knox
opens her closet to reveal boxes and boxes of shoes by Jimmy Choo,
Patrick Cox, Christian Louboutin, Gucci, JP Tod's, Manolo Blahnik,
Philippe Model, Issey Miyake, Maud Frizon, but the creme de la creme,
the ne plus ultra ultra of her collection is a pair of Roger Vivier heels
bought 20 years ago on Madison Avenue. They are crimson suede with
brass comma-shaped heels that rat-a-tat-tat like the report of a firing
squad as she crosses the parquet floor of her apartment. "Devil shoes"
she calls them, and you can imagine the dark, leering glances of men
and a whiff of brimstone.
What is it about shoes? She reaches for an answer. "Make you feel good?
Better than sex?"
The question persists. Joan Rivers aside ("Does fashion matter? Always
though not quite as much after death," she said), fashion is frivolous.
Yet, it is not. "Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment... would
[betray] what life we have led," Shakespeare wrote. And so it is with shoes.
Joanne Heaney, thirtysomething winner of a shoe-aholic contest run by
a Canadian chain of shoe stores, lives in Toronto and carries photographs
of her favorite shoes in her wallet. "I have about 200 pairs," she says. "My
fancy shoes are in my closet. Summer shoes are in another room. Winter
shoes are in the basement.
"Why shoes? They fit if you gain or lose weight. They make me feel
pretty. They make me feel sexy. They're a great antidepressant. I don't
have a pet or a boyfriend. I have my shoes."
Shoes are armor-protecting us from the flinty surface of the moon,
the searing sand of desert, the urban grime of city asphalt. Shoes also
reveal our vulnerability-not just the weakness of vanity, but the easily
wounded nature of our souls. O
SHOES 93
BATASHOEMUSEUM